Little Brothers of the Air Part 4

But the bluejays?

The bluejays, too, were there. One saucily flirted his tail at me from the top of a tree; another sly rogue flaunted his blue robes over a wall and disappeared the other side; a third shrieked in my face and slipped away behind a tree; but one and all were far too wise to reveal their domestic secrets. I knew mysteries were on foot among them, as we know little folk are in mischief by their unnatural stillness, but I knew also that not until every jay baby was out of the nest, and there was nothing to hide, should I see that cunning bird in his usual noisy, careless role.

The peculiarity of that particular corner of nature's handiwork was that any way you went you had to climb, except east, where you might roll if you chose; in fact, you could hardly do otherwise. The first day of my hunt I started west. I climbed a hill devoted to pasture, pa.s.sed through the bars, and faced my mountain. It presented a compact front of spruce-trees closely interlaced at the ground, and of course impa.s.sable.

But a way opened in the midst, the path of a mountain brook, deserted now and dry. I sought an alpenstock. I abandoned all impedimenta. I started up that stony path escorted on each side by a close rank of spruce. It was exceedingly steep, for the way of a brook on this mountain-side is a constant succession of falls. I scrambled over rocks; I stumbled on rolling stones; I "caught" on twigs and dead branches; I crept under fallen tree trunks; the way grew darker and more winding.

How merrily had the water rushed down this path, so hard to go up! How easy for it to do so again! Nothing seemed so natural. I began to look and listen for it.

A mysterious reluctance to penetrating the heart of the mountain by this unknown and strangely hewn path stole over me. I felt like an intruder.

Who could tell what the next turn might reveal? On a fallen trunk that barred my way I seated myself to rest. The silence was oppressive; not a bird called, not a squirrel chattered, not an insect hummed. The whole forest was one vast, deep, overwhelming solitude. I felt my slightest rustle an impertinence; I could not utter a sound; surely the spirit of the wood was near! A strange excitement, almost amounting to terror, possessed me. I turned and fled--that is to say, crept--down my steep and winding stair, back to the bars where I had taken leave of civilization (in the shape of one farmhouse).

Here I paused, and again the legend of bluejays allured me. From the bars, turning sharply to one side, were the tracks of cows. The strange feeling of oppression vanished. Wherever the gentle beasts had pa.s.sed, I could go, sure of finding sunny openings, gra.s.sy spots, and nothing uncanny. Meekly I followed in their footsteps; the solemn grandeur of the forest had so stirred me that even the footprint of a cow was companionable.

This path led down through a pleasant fringe of beech and birch and maple trees to a beautiful brook, which was easily crossed on stones, then up the bank on the other side into an open pasture with scattering spruce and other trees. Now I began to look for my bluejays. I disturbed the peace of a robin, who scolded me roundly from the top spire of a spruce. I started out in hot haste a dainty bit of bird life--the black and yellow warbler. I listened to the delightsome song of the field-sparrow. I heard the far-off drumming of the partridge. I walked and climbed myself tired.

Then I sat down to wait. I made a nosegay of blue violets and sweetbrier leaves; I regaled myself with wintergreens in memory of my childhood; I wrote up my note-book; but never a blue feather did I see.

The next day, between showers, I tried the north, with a guide--a visiting Ma.s.sachusetts ornithologist--to show me a partridge nest with the bird sitting. We followed the ups and downs of the road for a mile, pa.s.sing a meadow full of bobolinks,

"Bubbling rapturously, madly,"

climbed by a gra.s.s-grown wood road a mountain-side pasture, and reached the forest. Under a dead spruce sat my lady, in a snug bed among the fallen leaves. She was wet; her lovely mottled plumage was disarranged and draggled, but her head was drawn down into her feathers in patient endurance, the mother love triumphant over everything, even fear. We stood within six feet of the shy creature; we discussed her courage in the face of the human monsters we felt ourselves to be. Not a feather fluttered, not an eyelid quivered; truly it was the perfect love that casteth out fear.

My guide went on up to the top of Greylock; I turned back to pursue my search.

Eastward was my next trip, down toward the brook that made a valley between Greylock and Ragged Mountain. My path was under the edge of the woods that fringed a mountain stream. Not the smallest of the debt we owe the bonny brook is that it wears a deep gully, whose precipitous sides are clothed with a thick growth of waving trees--beech, white and black birches, maple, and chestnut--in refres.h.i.+ng and delightful confusion. The stream babbled and murmured at my side as I walked slowly down, peering in every bush for nests, and at last I parted the branches like a curtain and stepped within. It was a cool green solitude, a shrine, one of nature's most enchanting nooks, sacred to dreams and birds and--woodchucks, one of which sat straight up and looked solemnly at me out of his great brown eyes.

I sat on the low-growing limb of a tree, and was rocked by the wind outside. I forgot my object. What did it matter that I should find my bluejay? Was it worth while to go on? Was anything worth while, indeed, except to dream and muse, lulled by the music of the "laughing water"?

Ah! if one were a poet!

Then the birds came. A cat-bird first, with witching low song, eying me closely with that calm, dark eye of his, the while he poured it out from a shrub,

"Like dripping water falling slow Round mossy rooks, in music rare;"

a vireo, repeating over and over his few notes in tireless warble; high up in the maple across the chasm, a sweet-voiced goldfinch singing his soul away outside; and lastly, a robin, who broke the charm by a peremptory demand to know my business in his private quarters. I rose to leave him in possession. In rising I disturbed another resident, a red squirrel, who ran out on a branch and delivered as vehement a piece of mind as I ever heard, stamping his little feet and jerking his bushy tail with every word, scolding all over, to the tip of his longest hair.

I left them in their green paradise. I went to my room. I sat down in my rocker to consider.

Then the winds got up. Through the "bellows pipe," as they suggestively call the head of the valley, there poured such a gale that the birds could hardly hold on to their perches. All day long it tossed the branches, tore off leaves, beat the birds, rattled the windows, and filled the blue cover to our green bowl of a valley with clouds, even half way down the sides of the mountains themselves. And at last they began to weep, and I spent my twilight by an open window, wrapped in a shawl, listening to the

"Unrivaled one, the hermit-thrush, Solitary, singing in the west,"

and looking out upon the hills, where I still hoped to find my bluejay.

VII.

IN THE WOOD LOT.

"There's blue jays a-plenty up in the wood lot," said the farmer's boy, hearing me lament my unsuccessful search for that wily bird. "There's one pair makes an awful fuss every time I pa.s.ses."

I immediately offered to accompany the youth on his next trip up the mountain, where he was engaged in dragging down to our level, suns.h.i.+ne and summer breezes, winter winds and pure mountain air, in the shape of the bodies of trees, whose n.o.ble heads were laid low by the axes last winter. One hundred and fifty cords of beauty, the slow work of unnumbered years, brought down to "what base uses"! the most beautiful of nature's productions degraded to the lowest service--to fry our bacon and bake our pies!

The farmer did not look upon it exactly in that way; he called it "cord-wood," and his oxen dragged it down day by day. The point of view makes such a difference!

The road that wound down through the valley, skirting its hills, bridging its brooks, and connecting the lonely homestead with the rest of the human world, had on one side a beautiful border of all sorts of greeneries, just as Nature, with her inimitable touch, had placed them.

It was a home and a cover for small birds; it was a shade on a warm day; it was a delight to the eye at all times. Yet in the farmer's eye it was "s.h.i.+ftless" (the New Englander's bogy). The other side of the road he had "improved;" it gloried in what looked at a little distance like a single-file procession of glaring new posts, which on approaching were found to be the supports of one of man's neighborly devices--barbed wire. Rejoicing in this work of his hands on the left, he longed to turn his murderous weapons against the right side. He was labored with; he bided his time; but I knew in my heart that whoever went there next summer would find that picturesque road bristling with barbed wire on both sides. It will be as ugly as man can make it, but it will be "tidy"

(New England's s.h.i.+bboleth), for no sweet green thing will grow up beside it. Nature doesn't take kindly to barbed wire.

The old stone wall at that time was an irresistible invitation to the riotous luxuriance of vines. Elder-bushes, with their fine cream-colored blossoms, hung lovingly over it; blackberry bushes, lovely from their snowy flowering to their rich autumn foliage, flourished beside it; and a thousand and one exquisite, and to me nameless, green things hung upon it, and leaned against it, and nearly covered it up. And what a garden of delight nestled in each protected corner of an old-fas.h.i.+oned zigzag fence! Yet all these are under the ban--"s.h.i.+ftless."

Thanks be to the G.o.ds who sowed this country so full of stones and trees, that the army of farmers who have worried the land haven't succeeded in turning it into the abomination of desolation they admire!

And now, having relieved my mind, I'll go on with the bluejay hunt.

The next morning it was, for a rarity, fine. I started up the wood road ahead of my guide, so that I might take my climb as easily as such a thing can be taken. Pa.s.sing through the bare pasture, I entered the outlying clumps of spruce which form the advance-guard of the forests on Greylock, and here my leader overtook me, urging his fiery steeds, with their empty sled. Now horned beasts have had a certain terror for me ever since an exciting experience with them in my childhood. I stood respectfully on one side, prepared to fly should the "critters" (local) show malicious intent. On they came, looking at me sharply with wicked eyes. I made ready for a rush, when, lo! they turned from me, and dashed madly into a spruce-tree, nearly upsetting themselves, and threatening to run away. We were all afraid of each other.

The mortified driver apologized for their behavior on the ground that "they ain't much used to seeing a lady up in the wood lot." I generously forgave them, and then meekly followed in their footsteps, up, up, up toward the clouds, till we reached the bluejay neighborhood. Here we parted. My escort pa.s.sed on still higher, and I seated myself to see at last my bluejays.

Dead silence around me. Not a leaf stirred; not a bird peeped. I began to make a noise myself--calls and imitations (feeble) of bird-notes to arouse their curiosity; a bluejay is a born investigator. No sign of heaven's color appeared except in the patches of sky between the leaves.

Other wood dwellers came; a rose-breasted grosbeak, with lovely rosy s.h.i.+eld, with much posturing and many sharp "clicks," essayed to find out what manner of irreverent intruder this might be. Later his modest gray-clad spouse joined him. They circled around to view the wonder on all sides. They exchanged dubious-sounding opinions. They were as little "used to seeing a lady" as the oxen. They slipped away, and in a moment I heard his rich song from afar.

No one else paid the slightest attention to my coaxing, and I returned by easy stages to the spruces, where I had the misfortune to arouse the suspicion of a robin. Do you know what it is to be under robin surveillance? Let but one redbreast take it into his obstinate little head that you are a suspicious character, and he mounts the nearest tree--the very top twig, in plain sight--and begins his loud "Peep!

peep! tut, tut, tut! Peep! peep! tut, tut, tut!"

This is his tocsin of war, and soon his allies appear, and then

"From the north, from the east, from the south and the west, Woodland, wheat field, corn field, clover, Over and over, and over and over, Five o'clock, ten o'clock, twelve, or seven, Nothing but robin-calls heard under heaven."

No matter what you do or what you don't do. One will perch on each side of you, and join the maddening chorus, driving every bird in the neighborhood either to join in the hue and cry (as do some of the sparrows), or to hide himself from the monster that has been discovered.

I tried to tire them out by sitting absolutely motionless; but three, who evidently had business in the vicinity, for each held a mouthful of worms, guarded me to right and left and in front, and never ceased their offensive remarks long enough to stuff those worms into the mouths waiting for them.

I was not able to convince them that I had no designs on robin households, and I had to own myself defeated again. Then and there I abandoned the search for the bluejay.

VIII.

THE BLUEJAY BABY.

My time of triumph came, however, a little later. Birds may securely hide their nests, but they cannot always silence their nestlings. So soon as little folk find their voices, whether their dress be feathers, or furs, or French cambric, they are sure to make themselves heard and seen.

One morning, two or three weeks after I had given up the bluejay search, and consoled myself with looking after baby cat-birds and thrushes, I started out as usual for a walk. I turned naturally into a favorite path beside a brook that danced down the mountain below the house. It was near the bottom of a deep gully, where I had come to grief in my search for a veery baby.