Bird Stories Part 3

But even the charms of Cardinal-Flower Path did not hold Pan and Peter and Sandy many weeks. They seemed to be a sort of gypsy folk, with the love of wandering in their hearts; and it is pleasant to know that, as soon as they were grown enough, there was nothing to prevent their journeying forth with Peter and Mother Piper.

Of all the strange and wonderful plants and birds and insects they met upon the way I cannot tell you, for, in all my life, I have not traveled so far as these three children went long before they were one year old.

They went, in fact, way to the land where the insects live that are so hard and beautiful and gemlike that people sometimes use them for jewels. These are called "Brazilian beetles," and you can tell by that name where the Pipers spent the winter, though it may seem a very far way for a young bird to go, with neither train nor boat to give him a lift.

Not even tired they were, from all accounts, those little feather-folk; and why, indeed, should they be tired? A jaunt from a northern country to Brazil was not too much for a healthy bird, with its sure breath and pure rich blood. There was food enough along the trail--they chose their route wisely enough for that, you may be sure; and they were in no great haste either going or coming.

"Coming," did I say? Why, surely! You didn't think those sandpipers _stayed_ in Brazil? What did they care for green gem-like beetles, after all? The only decorations they ever wore were big dark polka dots on their vests. Perhaps they were all pleased with them, when their old travel-worn feathers dropped out and new ones came in. Who can tell?

They had a way of running their bills through their plumage after a bath, as if they liked to comb their pretty feathers.

Be that as it may, there was something beneath their feathers that quickened like the heart of a journeying gypsy when, with nodding heads and teetering tails, they started again for the north.

Did they dream of a bank where the blue-bells grew, and a sh.o.r.e spiced with the fragrance of wild mint?

No one will ever know just how Nature whispers to the bird, "Northward ho!" But we know they come in the springtime, and right glad are we to hear their voices.

So Peter Piper, Junior, came back again to the sh.o.r.e of Nearby Island.

And do you think Sandy and Pan walked behind him for company, calling, "Peep," one to another? And do you think Mother Piper and Father Peter showed him the way to Faraway Island at sun-down, and guarded him o'

nights? Not they! They were busy, every one, with their own affairs, and Peter would just have to get along without them.

Well, Peter could--Peter and Dot. For of course he was a grown-up sandpiper now, with a mate of his own, nodding her wise little head the livelong day, and teetering for joy all over the rocks where the red columbine grew.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The spot she teetered to most of all._]

The spot she teetered to most of all was a little cup-shaped hollow high up on the border of the ledge, where the sumachs were big as small trees and where the sweet fern scented the air. The hollow was lined tidily and softly with dried gra.s.s, and made a comfortable place to sit, no doubt. At least, Dot liked it; and Peter must have had some fondness for it, too, for he slipped on when Dot was not there herself. It just fitted their little bodies, and there were four eggs in it of which any sandpiper might well have been proud; for they were much, much bigger than most birds the size of Dot could ever lay. In fact, her little body could hardly have covered them snugly enough to keep them warm if they had not been packed just so, with the pointed ends pushed down into the middle of the rather deep nest.

The eggs were creamy white, with brown spots splashed over them--the proper sort of eggs (if only they had been smaller) to tuck beneath a warm breast decorated with pretty polka dots. But still, they must have been her very own, or Dot could not have taken such good care of them.

Because of this care, day by day the little body inside each sh.e.l.l grew from the wonderful single cell it started life with, to a many-celled creature, all fitted out with lungs and a heart and rich warm blood, and very slender legs, and very dear heads with very bright eyes, and all the other parts it takes to make a bird. When the birds were all made, they broke the sh.e.l.ls and pushed aside the pieces. And four more capable little rascals never were hatched.

Why, almost before one would think they had had time to dry their down and stretch their legs and get used to being outside of sh.e.l.ls instead of inside, those little babies walked way to the edge of the river, and from that time forth never needed their nest.

And look! the fluffy, cunning little dears are nodding their heads and teetering their tails! Yes, that proves that they must be sandpipers, even if we did have doubts of those eggs. Ah! Dot knew what she was about all along. The size of her eggs might fool a person, but she had not worried. Why, indeed, should she be troubled? Those big sh.e.l.ls had held food-material enough, so that her young, when hatched, were so strong and well-developed that they could go wandering forth at once.

They did not lie huddled in their nest, helplessly begging Peter Piper and Mother Dot to bring them food. Not they! Out they toddled, teetering along the sh.o.r.e, having picnics from the first--the little gypsy babies!

Tabby did not catch any of them, though one night she tried, and gave Dot an awful scare. It was while they were still tiny enough to be tucked under their mother's feathers after sundown, and before they could manage to get, stone by stone, to Nearby Island. So they were camped on the sh.o.r.e, and the prowling cat came very near. So near, in fact, that Mother Dot fluttered away from her young, calling back to them, in a language they understood, to scatter a bit, and then lie so still that not even the green eyes of the cat could see a motion. The four little Pipers obeyed. Not one of them questioned, "Why, Mother?" or whined, "I don't want to," or whimpered, "I'm frightened," or boasted, "Pooh, there's nothing here."

Dot led the crouching enemy away by fluttering as if she had a broken wing, and she called for help with all the agony of her mother-love.

"Pete," she cried, "Pete," and "Pete, Pete, Pete!"

No one who hears the wail of a frightened sandpiper begging protection for her young can sit unmoved.

Someone at the Ledge House heard Dot, and gave a low whistle and a quick command. Then there was a das.h.i.+ng rush through the bushes, that sounded as if a dog were chasing a cat. A few minutes later Dot's voice again called in the dark--this time, not in anguish of heart, but very cosily and gently. "Pete-weet?" she whispered; and four precious little babies murmured, "Peep," as they snuggled close to the spotted breast of their mother.

So it happened that two sons and two daughters of Peter Piper, Junior, played and picnicked and bathed by the river. The one who had first pipped his eggsh.e.l.l was named Peter the Third, for his father and his grandfather, and a finer young sandpiper never shook the fluff of down from his head or the fringe from his tail, when his real feathers pushed into their places.

What his brother and sisters were named, I never knew; and it didn't matter much, for their mother called them all "Pete."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Dallying happily along the river-edge._]

Peter the Third and the others grew up as Pan and Peter and Sandy had grown, dallying happily along the river-edge, and as happily accepting the guidance of their mother, who made her slow flight from Faraway Island every now and then, usually so low that her spotted breast was reflected in the clear water as she came, the white markings in her wings showing above and below.

Of course, as soon as the season came for their migration journey, the four of them started cheerfully off with Peter and Dot, for a leisurely little flight to Brazil and back--to fill the days, as it were, with pleasant wanderings, from the time the hummingbird fed at the feast of the cardinal flower in late summer, until he should be hovering over the columbine in the spring.

IV

GAVIA OF IMMER LAKE

Once upon a time, it was four millions of years ago. There were no people then all the way from Florida to Alaska. There was, indeed, in all this distance, no land to walk upon, except islands in the west where the Rocky Mountains are now. That is the only place where the country that is now the United States of America stuck up out of the water. Everywhere else were the waves of the sea. There were no people, even on the Rocky Mountain Islands. None at all.

No, the creatures that visited those island sh.o.r.es in those old days were not people, but birds. Nearly as large as men they were, and they had teeth on their long slender jaws, and they had no wings. They came to the islands, perhaps, only at nesting-time; for their legs and feet were fitted for swimming and not walking, and they lived upon fish in the sea. So they dwelt, with no man to see them, on the water that stretched from sea to sea; and what their voices were like, no man knows.

A million years, perhaps, pa.s.sed by, and then another million, and maybe another million still; and the birds without wings and with teeth were no more. In their places were other birds, much smaller--birds with wings and no teeth; but something like them, for all that: for their feet also were fitted for swimming and not walking, and they, too, visited the sh.o.r.e little, if at all, except at nesting-time, and they lived upon fish in the water.

And what their voices were like, all men may know who will go to the wilderness lakes and listen; for, wonderful as it may seem, these second birds have come down to us through perhaps a million years, and live to-day, giving a strange clear cry before a storm, and at other times calling weirdly in lone places, so that men who are within hearing always say, "The loons are laughing."

Gavia was a loon who had spent the winter of 1919-1920 on the Atlantic Ocean. There had hardly been, perhaps, in a million years a handsomer loon afloat on any sea. Even in her winter coat she was beautiful; and when she put on her spring suit, she was lovelier still.

She and her mate had enjoyed the sea-fis.h.i.+ng and had joined a company of forty for swimming parties and other loon festivities; for life on the ocean waves has many interests, and there is never a lack of entertainment. The salt-water bathing, diving, and such other activities as the sea affords, were pleasant for them all. Then, too, the winter months made a chance for rest, a change from home-duties, and a freedom from looking out for the children, that gave the loons a care-free manner as they rode the waves far out at sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Immer Lake.]

Considering all this, it seems strange, does it not, that when the spring of 1920 had gone no further than to melt the ice in the northern lakes, Gavia and her mate left the sea and took strong flight inland.

What made them go, I cannot explain. I do not understand it well enough.

I do not really know what urges the salmon to leave the Atlantic Ocean in the spring and travel up the Pen.o.bscot or the St. John River. I never felt quite sure why Peter Piper left Brazil for the sh.o.r.e where the blue-bells nod. All I can tell you about it is that a feeling came over the loons that is called a migration instinct; and, almost before Gavia and her mate knew what was happening to them, they had flown far and far from the Ocean, and were laughing weirdly over the cold waters of Immer Lake.

The sh.o.r.e was dark with the deep green of fir trees, whose straight trunks had blisters on them where drops of fragrant balsam lay hidden in the bark. And here and there trees with white slender trunks leaned out over the water, and the bark on these peeled up like pieces of thin and pretty paper. Three wonderful vines trailed through the woodland, and each in its season blossomed into pink and fragrant bells. But what these were, and how they looked, is not a part of this story, for Gavia never wandered among them. Her summer paths lay upon and under the water of the lake, as her winter trails had been upon and under the water of the sea.

Ah, if she loved the water so, why did she suddenly begin to stay out of it? If she delighted so in swimming and diving and chasing wild wing-races over the surface, why did she spend the day quietly in one place?

Of course you have guessed it! Gavia was on her nest. She had hidden her two babies among the bulrushes for safety, and must stay there herself to keep them warm. They were not yet out of their eggsh.e.l.ls, so the only care they needed for many a long day and night was constant warmth enough for growth. They lay near each other, the two big eggs, of a color that some might call brown and some might call green, with dark-brown spots splashed over them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Two babies, not yet out of their eggsh.e.l.ls, hidden among the rushes._]

The nest Gavia and her mate had prepared for them was a heap of old wet reeds and other dead water-plants, which they had piled up among the stems of the rushes until it reached six inches or more out of the water. They were really in the centre of a nest island, with water all about them. So, you see, Gavia was within splas.h.i.+ng distance of her fis.h.i.+ng-pool after all.

She and her mate, indeed, were in the habit of making their nests here in the cove; though the two pairs of Neighbor Loons, who built year after year farther up the lake, chose places on the island near the water-line in the spring; and when the water sank lower later on, they were left high and dry where they had to flounder back and forth to and from the nest, as awkward on land as they were graceful in the water.

Faithful to her unhatched young as Gavia was, it is not likely that she alone kept them warm for nearly thirty days and nights; for Father Loon remained close at hand, and would he not help her with this task?

Gavia, sitting on her nest, did not look like herself of the early winter months when she had played among the ocean waves. For her head and neck were now a beautiful green, and she wore two white striped collars, while the back of her feather coat was neatly checked off with little white squarish spots. Father Loon wore the same style that she did. Summer and winter, they dressed alike.

Yes, a handsome couple, indeed, waited that long month for the birth of their twins, growing all this time inside those two strong eggsh.e.l.ls. At last, however, the nest held the two babies, all feathered with down from the very first, black on their backs and gray shading into white beneath.